


Eternal

by unwhithered



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I don't even ship this, Minor Character Death, but i'm going to start out of spite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 11:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9654002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwhithered/pseuds/unwhithered
Summary: Ahsoka turns 18 in the middle of a swamp, knee deep in muck while trying to keep a trooper’s head above water and press down on his gaping gut wound at the same time. The effort is pointless and she knows it.She's held so many brothers while they died in a pointless, endless war. She can only thank the Force she hasn't had to watch her lover die yet.





	

Ahsoka turns 18 in the middle of a swamp, knee deep in muck while trying to keep a trooper’s head above water and press down on his gaping gut wound at the same time. The effort is pointless and she knows it. He’s going to die with his insides spilling out to mingle with stinking mud - but she can’t stop holding on, can’t stop trying. As his commander this is her fault. He’s a shiny, so new that she doesn’t even remember his name, and he’s going to die here because she knows how to use the Force to kill in a hundred ways but can’t heal more than a bruise. 

“I’m here,” she says when he gasps in pain. “I’ve got your back, soldier. You aren’t alone.”

They aren’t wearing helmets or full armor - it would stand out too much while they wage guerilla warfare in this kriffing swamp that covers half the Sith damned planet - and she can see the light going out of his brown eyes. When his hands scramble blindly for his own wound she abandons her pointless attempt to hold it closed and grabs his hands instead. Their fingers fit together the same way that she has fit with a thousand troopers before him and will with a thousand after. She knows the strength of his grip, can anticipate how it fades. The wet sounds of his dying breaths will join the last sounds of his many brothers in haunting her dreams for the rest of her life.

“Udesii, vod’ika. Udesii.” She holds his hands until they go limp, then lets them slide into the muddy water. His identification tag is all that she can afford to take for the long hike back to base camp - if they collected every fallen trooper’s body the cremation furnaces would burn around the clock for years. The swamp will have his body and the bodies of his fallen brothers. With one long glance back, she leaves him to help patch up the members of her squad that still live. Spending so much time comforting a nameless shiny during his last moments has put the rest of her men at risk of a return attack if the enemy realizes that one of their supply shipments has been destroyed along with all of its guards.

\-------

Even rain on this planet brings no relief. Hot and foul smelling, it drenches Ahsoka long before she makes it back to her pop up shelter in the center of their heavily fortified and camouflaged camp, yet somehow does not wash away the blood caked beneath her nails and dried in the creases of her palms. She strips off her outer layers outside of the shelter and leaves them in a disgusting pile just inside the door, shedding the rest of her clothing as she crosses to the thin sleeping pad rolled out on the floor. Only her boots make it far enough to be set carefully beside the pad, within easy reach. She would rather fight and die naked except for her boots than wear her mud and blood caked clothes to sleep for the tenth night in a row.

“Move, cyare,” she mumbles, prodding the lump taking up the whole sleeping mat. She knows he’s awake. The troopers can sleep anywhere, but they also wake at the slightest sign of trouble - or fortune. True to form, Rex grumbles a halfhearted complaint as he rolls over to make room for her and reaches up to catch her wrist. When he tugs, she goes willingly to the sleeping pad, tucking herself up against his chest for the first time in two standard weeks - though she’s lost track of how many of the planet’s short days have passed in that time. It turns out that he’s just as naked as she is.

“You smell like the wrong end of a bantha, little’un,” Rex complains. He nuzzles up against her montrals anyways before tucking her head beneath his chin. Ahsoka has grown tall over the past couple of years but she will never, ever be too big to be folded in his strong arms and held tight against his broad chest. 

“You’re no better,” she grumbles against his collarbone. Her nose is just sharp enough to differentiate the warm-home-gunmetal scent of  _ Rex _ beneath the overwhelming stench of mud and death that clings to everyone on this campaign. “I’m eighteen today, and I feel eighty.”

Rex hums thoughtfully. “I’m fifteen and look thirty. Feel about three hundred these days.”

She doesn’t have to ask, she can feel the pain and exhaustion radiating off of him. She does anyway. “That bad?”

“That bad. And the General still hasn’t broken back through the blockade.”

“Damnit.”

“My thoughts exactly,” he replies, ducking down to rub his cheek against hers a moment later. Without access to even the most basic of freshers his dark stubble has turned into a full beard and his bleached hair is showing black roots. If Ahsoka looked closely she could pick out the first strands of gray in them, so she doesn’t. Reminders of how fast he is aging, how he will inevitably leave her far too soon even if they both survive the war, are unwelcome at the moment. “I can hear you thinking, cyare. Go to sleep.”

“I can’t,” Ahsoka murmurs. “I held a brother while he died today, and I can’t remember his name. I only have the number on his ident tag to say during Remembrance. If his batchmates are gone, no one will say it again. He’ll just be...gone.”

“Nu kyr'adyc _ ,  _ shi taab'echaaj'la,” Rex reminds her, kissing her forehead. “If you remember him he is eternal, name or not.”

Ahsoka doesn’t know if she believes the trooper’s Mandalorian superstitions, or believes the Masters who speak grandly about all living things becoming one with the Force after death, or believes anything at all after four years of constant war. But she does know that she won’t ever forget holding that shiny’s hand as he died on a backwater planet with no particular strategic value. His loss is carved on her heart alongside so many others.

“Nu kyr’adyc, shi taab’echaaj’la,” she repeats anyway. She kisses the steady pulse in his throat, lingering there as she continues. “Don’t march march away without me, Rex.”


End file.
